Paul Smith is Professor of Cultural Studies and Global Affairs at George Mason University. Most of his working life has been spent in the US, including posts at Miami University OH, and Carnegie Mellon before his appointment at George Mason University in 1996. Between 1999 and 2002 he was chaired Professor and department head of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex. At George Mason he has been director of the Center for the Study of the Americas and currently teaches mostly in the Cultural Studies PhD program, but also for Global Affairs. He was elected President of the national Cultural Studies Association (2016-18). He is the author of Pound Revised, Discerning the Subject, Clint Eastwood: A Cultural Production, Millennial Dreams: Culture and Capital in the North, and Primitive America: The Ideology of Capitalist Democracy. He has edited Men in Feminism (with Alice Jardine), Madonnarama (with Lisa Frank), and Boys, and has published a book of translations from Jean Louis Schefer, The Enigmatic Body. His essays and articles have appeared in scores of journals and collections in the US and overseas. His most recent edited volume is T he Renewal of Cultural Studies and he is currently completing a book on Covid vaccines. Alexander Monea is an Assistant Professor in the English Department and Cultural Studies Program at George Mason University. He researches the history and cultural impacts of computers and digital media. He is the author of The Digital Closet: How the Internet Became Straight and co-author of The Prisonhouse of the Circuit: Politics of Control from Analog to Digital. He is also an editor for the journal Data & Policy focusing on the area of Ethics, Equity, and Trust. Maillim Santiago is a media and culture scholar pursuing a Cultural Studies doctoral track at George Mason University. She has contributed work to MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture and Final Girls Film Festival. Her work has screened across the country, including the Brooklyn Women's Film Festival, Tampa Bay Comic Con, Florida's Undergraduate Research Conference, Orlando Film Festival, Final Girls Film Festival, and more.
